


Sacred

by Alexander_L



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Friendship/Love, Healing, Mercibert Weekend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28663959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexander_L/pseuds/Alexander_L
Summary: After Edelgard is severely wounded, Mercedes teaches Hubert how to use healing magic so he can help care for her and also so that he can understand that he can have faith without it being in the same things Mercedes does.Written for Mercibert Weekend 2020, for the prompt Devotion.
Relationships: Mercedes von Martritz/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26
Collections: Mercedes/Hubert Weekend





	Sacred

Mornings in the infirmary held a sacredness to them. In those early moments of the day, hope could finally be seen in the eyes of those who waited. Those who sat beside the bedsides throughout the night during the long hours when it felt more and more impossible to imagine the person they loved recovering would finally lift their heads, look towards the sunlight, and realize that the worst was over.

Nights were Mercedes’s domain, staying up tending to the people in her care, pushing through the exhaustion to keep alert and watchful eyes on them. She lived for the sanctuary of mornings.

She smiled as she walked past Petra’s room and saw Dorothea crying happily in her arms, relieved that the fever of her wounds had passed finally.

She checked in on Sylvain to find Felix brewing him a cup of tea and looking annoyed now – a vast improvement upon his numb hopelessness of yesterday.

In the last chamber of the infirmary was Edelgard’s room and Mercedes took a deep breath as she approached it, for she knew that of all the people waking up in this infirmary with renewed hope, Hubert might be the only one waking up to bad news.

Edelgard’s condition was tenuous after the wounds she suffered in their final battle in Fhirdiad and unlike Petra who could probably walk out of here in the afternoon or Sylvain who would recover his strength within a matter of days, there was a chance, however Mercedes refused to accept it, that Edelgard might not leave here.

Knocking on the door, Mercedes waited to enter until she heard Hubert’s hoarse voice croak, “Come in.”

Golden summer light was spilling through the curtains, but for all its warmth Hubert still looked cold and pale as a ghost. He was slumped in a chair next to Edelgard’s bedside, her hand cradled in both of his, and an expression of such soul-deep exhaustion on his face that Mercedes’s heart ached.

“The fever chills passed around a quarter past five,” he said stiffly as if he was her physician’s assistant simply relaying information to her in a business-like manner. “I gave her three drops of the potion at six like you instructed and for half an hour her temperature lowered to one hundred and one, but over the course of the past half hour it has risen once more to one hundred and two.”

“Thank you for helping me so I could spend a little time looking after the others too,” Mercedes said, pulling up a chair to sit beside him. 

“Of course,” Hubert said. “You cannot be in two places at once whereas the only place I should be is here.”

Casting a simple examination spell, Mercedes closed her eyes and held her hands above Edelgard’s unconscious body, palms an inch away from her skin, and meticulously moved them from her head to her feet, surveying every sign of damage or illness the magic could discover within her.

She was not better; but she was not worse. That was important. Very important at this stage where it might be too early to hope for a turn towards recovery and the best news was the prevention of a turn for the worse.

Mercedes told Hubert as much as she relayed the findings of her examination spell and he nodded grimly.

After doing all she could for Edelgard for the moment, Mercedes should have moved on to her next patient but her heart kept her tethered here for a while longer, for Edelgard was not the only one she was worried about.

“Hubert,” she said softly.

He did not reply.

“Look at me,” she urged.

It was a long moment before he complied and slowly raised his eyes to hers. Mercedes understood the emotion in them intimately, the torture of feeling helpless. He swiftly grew uncomfortable with her understanding and glanced away, his hair falling across his face. 

Reaching out to brush the tangled curls out of his eyes and tuck them behind his ear, Mercedes cupped his cheek in her hand and gently turned his face back towards her.

Her sweet and encouraging words bolstered the spirits of others, but Hubert was a man no one could pretend to, no matter how well-meaning the pretense. Mercedes had no platitudes or scriptures for him, so she just brushed her thumb across his brow and gazed at him silently, offering love and support without words.

His stern mouth quivered as he stared back at her then his composure fractured and he closed his eyes, placing his hand over hers and leaning into the comfort of her touch. 

“Mercedes,” he whispered. “If she-”

“No,” she replied. “We are not in the stage where we look to the future. Right now, we must focus on the present. We must fight for her with everything we have before we waste a single breath of our energy on thinking what will happen if she doesn’t recover.”

His lips parted slightly in an anguished gasp and he hid his face in her hand, pressing a kiss against her palm. His pain resonated so deeply within her that tears came to her eyes and she wrapped her arms around him, placing a hand on the back of his head and pulling it down to rest on her shoulder.

Hubert clung to her desperately, burying his face in her neck. He did not cry, but his breath came in shuddering gasps and his shoulders trembled with the effort to restrain his emotion lest it overcome him further. 

Combing her fingers through his hair, Mercedes kissed the side of his head and held him. “I won’t let you down, my love. I’ll save her.”

“You’re very powerful, but you are only human,” he murmured against her skin.

“Faith magic draws upon things much stronger than a person’s own power,” she replied.

Hubert laughed faintly, a bitter sound hardly more than a sharp and tremulous exhale. “I suppose  _ faith _ is not my specialty. I can’t claim to understand it.”

“I don’t know about that. You may not understand faith, but you understand devotion and the two are very similar. They are both very powerful sources of magic.”

Hubert pulled out of her arms and Mercedes put her hands on his shoulders to steady him.

“Do you remember teaching me reason magic?” she asked. “You spent months patiently showing me how to weave the spells. I’m afraid I was rather clumsy with all the mathematics of it.”

“You were a quick learner and are a fearsome gremory now,” he assured her.

“It didn’t feel like I was. I thought I was quite slow and dull. But you were so patient with me.” She reached down to pick up his gloved hands and hold them in hers. “Let me teach you something, to repay you.”

“Mercedes…”

She pulled off his gloves and Hubert winced slightly as she touched his bare skin, stained irrevocably with the black and violet burns of dark magic. With a soft smile, she raised them to her lips and kissed his fingers.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m sorry; you distracted me, my love,” she said. She moved his hands towards the bed and positioned them so they were held a few inches above Edelgard’s body in the position of a simple healing spell. “I’m going to teach you a little about faith.”

“I have tried before to learn healing magic,” he said. “It has not yielded very remarkable results.”

“Well, you haven’t had me as a teacher, have you?”

Although weary and weakened, determination steeled Hubert’s expression and he nodded. “You can try.”

“Close your eyes,” she said.

“Why? I need to watch what you do to learn.”

“Faith magic is not about equations and intricate movements. You don’t need to watch. You need to focus.”

“On what?”

“Within yourself,” she said. “Turn all your attention inward towards your spirit.”

“A spirit is not a concrete thing,” he argued. “You can’t-”

“In the center of your chest, right by your heart and your lungs and the core of your body, you can feel a warmth. It’s hard to describe and it feels different to everyone, but to me it feels like a tiny star, just a pinpoint of light that is very steady and very bright.”

Hubert muttered something about this not being scientific at all but Mercedes ignored him.

“Focus,” she said. “You know how to draw from elements like fire and air. This isn’t so different. Faith magic is an elemental spell like the others; the element is just your spirit. Just try to touch on that power, draw it to your hands. You’ll feel that sensation that rests in your core of energy in your fingers when you do, kind of a tingle of warmth, I guess.”

“And how is a tingle of warmth supposed to do anything?”

“Because you’re going to draw more energy once you learn how to summon it. It can feel painful though and very tiring. You have to make sure you keep your spirit and your mind very strong if you intend to use healing magic or it will burn you out.”

Inhaling and exhaling slowly, Hubert worked to follow her instructions, skeptical as he was. And after a minute, Mercedes felt the flow of magic to his fingertips. It was tenuous but steady and her heart lifted. Hubert really was so smart and capable. 

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now you have your source of magic you just have to learn the spell.” Picking up a scalpel, Mercedes flicked it across her arm and made a small slice. “Open your eyes.”

Hubert’s brow furrowed when he saw the blood trickling down her arm. “You didnt have to-”

“Hush,” Mercedes said. “Pay attention.”

Step by step, she walked him through the procedure of the spell by healing up the cut. When he seemed to understand the theory of it at last, she took the scalpel and sliced the cut open again.

Frowning in concentration, Hubert attempted to cast the spell to fuse the cut. Mercedes felt her skin prickle with pain and the edge of the cut started to heal until Hubert’s spell sputtered out, leaving the rest of it unsealed.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

“Try again,” she said.

Ignoring the pain, Mercedes continued to work with him as he tried the spell over and over. The sunlight had grown stronger and completely filled the room by the time he finally got the cut fully healed. 

With a sigh of relief, Hubert picked up a cloth, dipped it in water, and tenderly washed away the dried blood on Mercedes’s arm.

“Well, I will hardly save a life with this tiny spell,” he said. “All I have done is torment your arm for an hour.”

“You learned in an hour what it takes most people a semester to learn,” she replied. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, dear.”

“Why are you teaching me this?” he asked as he set the cloth aside.

Mercedes took his hand and raised it to her lips. “Because these hands are good for so much more than dark magic. And so is your devotion. You don’t need to be a saint to use healing magic, Hubert. You just have to have strength in your spirit.”

His gaze strayed back to Edelgard, who was sleeping peacefully, Mercedes’s spells and potions having eased her fever enough to help her rest a bit.

“Now you can fight to keep her alive in the infirmary just as much as you do on the battlefield,” Mercedes said.

Hubert opened his mouth to reply but no words came and he cleared his throat as emotion swelled in it. Without looking away from Edelgard, he reached out and pulled Mercedes into his arms.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I could not do this without you.”

She exhaled a long sigh of exhaustion and tucked her head in the crook of his neck. “She made it through the night. She’ll make it through another, with both of us here to protect her.”

Hubert’s arms tightened around her and as he held her, Mercedes wondered why he couldn’t see himself the way she saw him, why he didn’t understand that he was as gentle as he was brutal and as passionate as he was rational, that his faith held just as much power as hers and his love kept her alive as much as her spells did him.

But maybe, with enough patience and time, he would learn.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me about Hubert! Twitter @lalexanderwrite


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